Dear Christina,

I’ve really screwed up this time. I’m moving my WP site to a new host and I changed the DNS settings before exporting my database and WP files.

I’m unable to access the dashboard now and my old host is being uncooperative (account is active till end of the month).  Do you have any ideas for me or should I just forget it & start fresh?

Mary H Ruth-Virtual Writing & Communications Solutions

Dear Mary,

We’ve discussed this privately through email already but I wanted to share this with my readers.  Unfortunately, you are having to start from scratch with your site but, look at it as a lesson learned. One you’ll NEVER have to learn again.

For anyone else contemplating a move, here are the steps to take to ensure you do it correctly and safely.

Moving from one host to another:

First and foremost, BACKUP EVERYTHING to your own computer.

• use plugin WP-DB-Backup to have your entire database backed up and either download it to your computer or have it emailed to you. Be sure to write down the name of the database, username and password
• Using your favorite FTP program, download your entire WordPress installation files (wp-admin, wp-content & everything else)

Place everything in a folder named “old blog”

Now, only if the domain name is changing, go back to your dashboard under “settings –>general”  you’ll need to change the listed URL to the new one. Then backup and download your database and WP installation files again. Save to a folder named “new blog”.

You can change your DNS settings at this point.

Most hosts have the “quick install” option for WP. In that case, use it to get WP set up easily on your new host.

Now you just need to get your old database files into your new database. You can do this through phpmyadmin if you have access. Please check with your hosting company to get instructions on how to upload the database files. There are too many ways to do this (depending on host) that it would take me forever to cover them all.

Generally you will need to set up a new database and name it the same as your old database. Also set user and password the same. Then upload the old database file into the new database.

Only if you changed domain name: You have to open your old database file (unzip it and open in notepad) and replace all instances of your old domain name to the new one. You can use the “find-replace” option in notepad to make sure you got them all.

When you do that and go to yourdomain.com/wp-login.php you will be told your database needs to be updated, which is fine. Run the process (very quick) and all your old posts should be available now.

Now you’ll need to sign into your new host by FTP and upload your WP installation files, overwriting the one that were installed with the “quick install”.

**If you get a “database”  error at your URL after uploading, you have to open up your wp-config.php file in notepad and make sure database name, username & password all match what is set in your new hosting account.

You’ll have to go through each setting on the dashboard to make sure all are set the way you want them. Also you’ll need to set your theme.

Guess what? You just did that all by yourself! Not as bad as you thought, huh?

~Christina

Dear Christina,

I’ve c hange my blog to a website with help from your instructions in one of your previous posts. I’ve disabled RSS but would like to remove the RSS icon in the address bar. How can I do this?

Kirsty

Dear Kirsty,

I’m so glad my instructions were helpful in turning your Worpress blog into a website.

Removing the RSS icon from the address bar is quite simple, really.
You’ll need to go into your header.php file and remove all of the following (you may not have all listed):

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>”/>
<link rel=”alternate” type=”text/xml” title=”RSS .92″ href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss_url’); ?>”/>
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/atom+xml” title=”Atom 0.3″ href=”<?php bloginfo(‘atom_url’); ?>”/>

Be sure to “save changes” and that’s it. RSS icon is gone!

~Christina

Dear Christina,
I have a wordpress theme that is normally used for a blog but I am changing it to become a website.

Do you have any resources you can suggest which will help me to make as many changes so that the theme looks more like a website and less like a blog. I don’t write CSS.

Do you know what changes I should make in my WP dashboard which will aid in creating a website rather than a blog?

Thank you for your help!

Janine -Your Virtual Wizard

****This is only a general outline of my personal experience with the themes I am familiar with. Read your theme documentation or hire a professional, if none of the following applies to your theme or if you do not understand code.

Dear Janine,

I’m so glad you asked.  I run into people all the time who don’t understand how a “blog” can look less like a blog and more like a professional website. My daily job is explaining it to them and showing examples.

This site, Dear Christina, is a blog. It’s a blog template, it has all the features of a blog and it allows commenting.

My company site is a Professional website. It’s a blog template with all of the “bloggy” things removed &  no comments allowed.

To change a blog template into a more professional looking Business site you need to start with your Dashboard.

-You won’t be using “posts”, only “pages” (be sure to add a new page before you continue)

Change the following under “Settings”:

1. under “reading” click dot next to “static page” and choose what page you want as your home page. Save blog setting for when you are ready to incorporate a blog.
2. Under “permalinks” click “custom” and enter “/%pagename%/” in the box (this shows your URL as www.yourdomain.com/contact instead of www.yourdomain.com/pg=4)

- Install the following plug-ins to make it easier to maintain your site (links are to explanations, grab plugin by searching in “add new plugins”):

1. All in One SEO Pack
2. Contact Form 7
3. WP Google Analytics
4. Google XML Sitemaps

I also like to have these:

1. Exclude Pages from Navigation
2. pageMash
3. WP Post Columns

Now, once those are all installed, it’s time to dive into your code files.

Don’t be scared, repeat after me:

“We always take precautions before touching code!”

and again

“WE ALWAYS TAKE PRECAUTIONS BEFORE TOUCHING CODE!”

Thank you, now save your original template/theme files somewhere on your computer so you have them to refer back to, or if there is need to reinstall clean.

First, we want to remove the meta data on each page/post. That’s the little area where author, date, comments, etc is shown under heading or at the bottom of the content. Only blogs need that info.

Each theme is different as to where you will find the exact code but check each php file to find all instances of these:

Once you find them you can (if you are brave) delete them.

I recommend the other method of “commenting out” the offending code.

To do that, you would add an asterisk (*) and backslash (/) at the beginning and end of the piece of code like this:

*/ <?php the_category() ?> */

simple.

That way if you ever want any of it to show, you can just remove the */ and the code is active again.

If you don’t want the page name to show above your content (as it does with blog posts) you’ll be removing this code from your php files as well: */   <?php the_title(); ?> */

If you are uncomfortable messing with your code please ask someone who knows what they are doing to help you. Without looking at each individual theme and it’s coding it’s hard to say 100% that all of my suggestions will work.

~Christina

Dear Christina,

How do you add meta tags to your pages?

Thanks in advance.

Tahneesha Smith – A Virtual Blessing

Dear Taneesha,

Adding Meta tags to your WordPress site is really good SEO practice.

Those tags help the search engines categorize your pages more efficiently, which makes it easier for a potential client to find exactly what they are looking for.
Hopefully that’s you.

Adding separate tags for each page/post is not the best idea, but it is possible.

The easiest way is to install the All In One SEO plugin. This plugin is streamlined for the best WordPress SEO.

Once installed you can set your Meta tags, descriptions and keywords for your entire site and then, customize them all for each individual page or post as you want.

At the bottom of each page/post you’ll see this (you’ll see the same plus tons more options on the settings tab for this plugin):

Examples for each section:

Title: This is the title you want at the top of your(and your visitor’s) browser- if you look at the very top left corner of your browser window right now you’ll see “Adding Meta Tags to Pages | Dear Christina”

That’s my title for this page/post. I configured All In One SEO from the settings tab in my dashboard, so the title changes with the post. I don’t have to do anything except maybe add some additional keywords for this one post.

Description: The description should be short and sweet. This is not the place to explain your entire business, just a quick blurb that gives searches a reason to click to your site.

Keywords: Don’t go overboard here either. A few choice keywords go a long way. Enter only those that your target client may be searching for.

Title Attribute & Menu Label: I don’t touch these.

Disable on this page/post: Only check this box if you don’t want the page/post indexed by the search engines.

I hope my answer helps you in your SEO efforts.

~Christina

From the WordPress Codex –

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. The URL to each post should be permanent, and never change — hence permalink.

When you write posts in WordPress you get a default permalink which looks something like this

http://yourdomain.com/?p=4

The “4″ is your post ID #.

To change your permalinks to look cleaner you need to go into your Dashboard under “Settings” and click on “Permalinks”.

From there you can choose form the options available or customize exactly the way you want.

Other options available are:

http://yourdomain.com/year/month/day/post-title

http://yourdomain.com/year/month/post-title

http://yourdomain.com/archives/post-title

I prefer to use the “Custom Structure” option so my permalinks all show as http://christina-nelson.com/post-title.

To so that enter this into the “Custom Structure” option box (without the quotes) “/%postname%/”

~Christina

WordPress gives the best explanation here but, in a nutshell:

• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A’s blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A’s blog
• Person A’s blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B’s post

~Christina